While being apart of Sprelly, I’ve gained a lot of knowledge on using social media effectively in order to help the social status of a profile. Using social media can be very powerful in getting across one or multiple messages but it all matters on how you use it. Being conscience of who your audience is and how to get your attention are really your first steps in making posts directed towards your target market.
Depending on what your business is, it primarily impacts what kinds of social media outlets best suit your needs. Out of the many social outlets including, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Meetup and such, it really depends on who or what you’re trying to do with those outlets. It’s great to have a basic general page on Facebook or Twitter just to appear current. Sometimes using Twitter or Facebook might not be the most effective solution for your business needs.
Here I’ve listed the best instances to use each platform:
Facebook is a great community platform to use if you’d like to bring attention to a product your company is launching, a new business a local community wants to support or just in general to start off in getting buzz around your business. Having people share you post is always a great way to build more of a community on Facebook. It is also important that you work on engagement rather than focusing on having x-amount of likes. Having a high amount of organic likes is something you want to strive for, rather than buying them.
Try posting in your Facebook page posts or topics that others will comment on and you can reply to. Being able to engage your audience on multiple occasions is something you want to continue to do on your page. Buying ad space is never a good thing to do on Facebook anymore. Due to the technical issues Facebook has had in recent months it is always a better solution to buy google ads, that way you can use SEO to your advantage with Google Ads.
Being in any sort of technology focused business, Twitter is the best solution for you. Being able to use hashtags, key words, bit.ly links and such helps you focus your content and being able to be seen by many users. Being forced to keep it short and simple helps when it comes to your information to focus the message to hit the right target audience. For Non Profits, Twitter can be very effective using a communal hashtag to help bring awareness but also to help show the grand scale of a local community.
When your business is visually focused and requires for customers to see your products, for example: food or retail, people become enticed to buy your product when their is a good visual component. By using Instagram you are using something current that your consumers will be drawn to view. Having a lot of followers and using the right hashtags definitely helps build your audience. Instagram is also a great way to showcase your events through social media.
If your a business that mainly focuses on B2B solutions and services, LinkedIn is a great place for you to put content on social media. Anything from news articles and blogs, its definitely will help your professional presence overall. Even though social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter exist, using them might not be as effective but still nice to have in the grander scheme sense where people think your business is current.
Foursquare and Vine
If your business is retail focused it is definitely great to utilize your Foursquare account. Owning that location helps be able to do deals when customers come in to buy products during big holiday sales. The more people are interactive in checking in to your location the more active or “buzzworthy” a place may seem. Reviews also help you see what your customers like the most about the location and its products.
Vine is a great short video platform. The phone app is a quick platform you can use to either tease a coming product, show something that is currently happening to create buzz or just something fun to use in order to be across another social media platform to share on Twitter.
YouTube and Vimeo
Video is a great source of visual material you can post on other social media platforms. Youtube and Vimeo have different instances in which they should be used. If you are creating a video you would like to be professionally seen I’d recommend uploading it to Vimeo. Vimeo is a great platform for showing well crafted videography as more of an art form than just posting a daily Vlog or promotional video.
YouTube does has is perks of being a place to upload a lot of videos if you are a business that does that more frequently. Having video podcasts, instructional videos or small promotional videos are good content to use to place on YouTube. There are good sharing tools on both Vimeo and YouTube in order to engage a larger audience.
Social Media is a powerful tool. With this knowledge I hope you’re able to take it and use it to your advantage to build your business or professional presence across the web, good luck!
